


Burn Pattern

by what_alchemy



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-01
Updated: 2011-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-26 18:11:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“You should grow a moustache,” Sherlock said.</i></p><p>In which there is a small disagreement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn Pattern

John wanted one of Sherlock’s silent moods to strike.

It had been a long day, full of tiny, bothersome little obstacles that piled up to create a perfect storm of grump, like waking up too early for a piss and being unable to get back to sleep, finding one of Sherlock’s experiments occupying the shower just when he needed it, a drizzly, miserable sideways rain that no brolly protected him from, a dogged ache in his shoulder from the damp, a scheduling mishap at the clinic resulting in a dozen surly patients, a coffee machine spitting out sludge, and so on, and so forth. By the time John got home from his shift, all he wanted was to sink into his chair with a steaming cuppa and the paper, and for no one — not Mrs. Hudson, not Sherlock, not God Almighty — to poke him with a stick.

Of course, what he got was his chair, his cuppa, his paper, and Sherlock, idle in a silk dressing gown, sitting sideways in a chair across the way, staring at him with that unnerving, unblinking singularity he had, perfectly still.

John shook out the paper and set to ignoring him with as much pointed nonchalance as he could muster.

“You should grow a moustache,” Sherlock said just when John was catching up on the local MP’s latest failure. He placed arching emphasis on the second syllable.

“No I shouldn’t,” John replied.

“Yes you should.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

John huffed out a sigh and ventured one irritated glance in Sherlock’s direction.

“And _why_ should I grow a moustache?”

“Because you would look dashing.” Sherlock’s eyes were an icy steel grey, steady and trained on John.

John made a show of straightening the paper out.

“I have patchy, dishwater-coloured facial hair, Sherlock, and the moustache is the most dubious element of men’s fashion imaginable.” He paused, hazarded a glance at Sherlock, then returned to the paper he was no longer reading. “And I wouldn’t look dashing for a moment — you’re just trying to get me to grow one for your own amusement.”

“Not my amusement,” Sherlock said after a moment’s pause. “An experiment.”

“What kind of experiment?”

“Whisker burn.”

“Whisker burn.”

“Yes.”

John put the paper down in his lap and sighed again. He turned to look Sherlock in the face. He’d inched his chair closer to John’s and was now barely a foot and a half away from him, shoulders square, back straight, at attention.

“You’re asking me to kiss you with a moustache.”

“You kiss me anyway,” Sherlock said. “Why not do it in the pursuit of knowledge?”

John passed a hand over his forehead and tried not to imagine that he could feel the vein in his temple pulsing.

“Sherlock,” he said, “bit not good.”

Sherlock made a short, unintelligible sound and said, “Why?”

“Because you don’t get to use your partner for experiments!” John said, scowling. “You especially don’t get to treat my feelings for you like some kind of, some kind of _game_ , or set of variables, or whatever mathematical equation you’ve got brewing in that dirty great brain of yours.”

“Last week you said it’s good to try new ideas in bed if I want.”

“Oh, don’t do that,” John said. “Don’t pretend you don’t know the difference between a bit of fun in bed and, and _this_.”

“John, really,” Sherlock said with a huff. “It’s just a moustache.”

It wasn’t, of course.

“I know this sex and relationship stuff is all very new to you, but can you try to act like a human being about something, for once in your life?”

Sherlock stiffened and drew back. John pressed his lips together, but he couldn’t bite back the words.

“Look,” he said very carefully, “what we have — it’s not a novelty, Sherlock. It’s not something you can pick up and discard whenever you feel like. I’m — _we’re_ — not an experiment.”

Ice chip eyes went narrow.

“Angelo has a moustache,” he said slyly. “In fact, Angelo has a whole _beard._ ”

John scoffed, shook his head, and turned back to his paper.

“You’re impossible.”

“Bristly, too, I’d wager,” Sherlock went on. “Interesting burn pattern. I wonder what it would do to my softest bits.”

John pulled the paper closer to his face and blocked Sherlock from his line of vision. In the periphery though, a wild, unkempt curl of inky hair was still visible. John ignored it.

“I’d probably be rubbed raw all around my mouth.” Sherlock delivered his monologue lightly but with his usual intense focus, as if it were something curious to ponder. “And my neck, and under my ear.” All bits of him that John liked best. “My stomach. Oh, and my inner thigh, John, do you think Angelo would like it?”

“You can shut up any time.”

“Oh, I know — my _perineum_.”

The paper came down in a loud crinkle and John practically snarled.

“Okay, stop. Just stop right now — this isn’t on.”

Sherlock’s gaze darted over him, and he cocked his head minutely. He’d have John deduced in moments.

“You’re not jealous,” he said, and God, did John detect a note of disappointment there? “What is this then?”

“I know you’re not serious about getting bloody _Angelo_ to rub his beard all over you, you tosser.” He balled his fists and thumped them on the paper in his lap. “You’re gagging for it — but only from me. It’s obvious you’re utterly gone on me.”

Sherlock’s mouth curved dramatically downward into a perfect half moon. He stood and swirled around and threw himself into the sofa, presenting John with the knobs of his spine.

“Arse,” John muttered.

Minutes passed. John didn’t read the newspaper. He could hear the ticking of the kitchen clock. He could feel the wounded energy of Sherlock’s fit of pique overcoming him. He sighed. Again.

“It’s not jealousy. It’s the very fact that you would attempt to manipulate me into some kind of jealous rage in the first place. And very clumsily, I might add.”

Sherlock got up again in a flurry of silk, and he plopped himself down on his knees in front of John, wormed his head beneath John’s arms, the paper, and finally John’s tee-shirt. He pushed his face into John’s stomach and stayed there, unmoving.

Unbidden, John’s heart swelled, and he took a cool breath. He laid a hand on Sherlock’s head over the cotton of the shirt.

“I can’t grow a moustache,” he said, voice gentle. “I’d look absolutely horrid. If it’s something you really need, how about you grow a moustache and you can do whatever you need to do to me with it? You could get one of those thin ones that come off your face, and you could wax it into little points. It would be just the thing.”

Sherlock shook his head against John’s stomach.

“Why not?” John asked. “It’s a good compromise. That’s what we’re going to have to do a lot, you know — compromise.”

Sherlock mumbled into John’s belly button. John tried not to be ticklish, but he cupped the back of Sherlock’s head in a steadying motion.

“What was that?”

Sherlock turned just slightly so his mouth wasn’t buried in John’s skin.

“Ginger,” he said.

“…What?”

“My beard. It’s ginger. No one can ever know.”

John barked out a laugh, and Sherlock’s face bounced a bit off his flexing belly.

“Of course,” John said. “I’ll not tell a soul.”

His giggles died away, and for long moments there was just the humid draw of Sherlock’s breath against his belly. The paper had fluttered to the floor.

“Sherlock,” John said into the quiet. Sherlock hummed into his skin. “It’s just that it won’t always be like this. Us, completely mad for each other. Someday the things you found endearing about me will be exactly what grates you. Someday all this…infatuation will wear off, and we’ll be left with bedrock instead of window dressing, a real relationship. And that’s fine, that’s good, better than good even — but it’s not this dizzying sort of intoxication we’re feeling right now. I just — I don’t like thinking that the moment I can’t entertain you, you’ll get bored and fuck off and think, ‘That useless John Watson, I’m well quit of him.’ I couldn’t stand that, Sherlock.”

Sherlock’s arms came up and insinuated themselves around John’s hips, hugging him close. He pressed his face further into John’s stomach. John felt Sherlock’s mouth open, and it sealed over the bit of skin that ringed the bottom of John’s navel. The velvet weight of Sherlock’s tongue was warm where it lay, inert.

“Yeah,” John said. “Me too.”

 **End**


End file.
